


A Little Fall of Rain

by PokeChan



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Acid Tokyo, Angst, Gen, crying!Kurogane, everything is sad for ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 05:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5484989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeChan/pseuds/PokeChan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Syaoran is gone. Sakura is grieving. Fai is broken.</p>
<p>And Kurogane does not know how to protect them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Fall of Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This was only supposed to be a paragraph or two about Kurogane crying in Acid Tokyo and that's not what happened.

It’s decided that taking a few days to rest and heal is the best plan. Sakura gives the people of Tokyo her memory and Kurogane watches her sneak down into the reservoir to pray for the safety of the people. He knows she hopes this singular piece of her oh so powerful soul will be enough to help save them. He understands her desire to be able to actually save someone in the wake of this disaster. 

He feels much the same.

The new Syaoran sticks close to her, gives her space while he hovers. Fai hovers as well, much closer, his single eye tired and downcast. The only time Fai leaves her side is when she goes to pray. Kurogane doesn’t know where Fai goes during this time, but he vanishes until Sakura reemerges. Kurogane lets him go, doesn’t try to track him own. They all need their space.

Mokona has taken to keeping very close to Kurogane, a near constant presence on his shoulder or his head. She’s quiet, deflated almost, and it’s wrong just like everything else is right now and it’s like someone is screaming in his head and beating at his chest and the world fades at the corners. Kurogane knows Mokona knows what he’s feeling, it’s why she stays so close. They’re all hurting and there’s nothing to be done about it but for them to keep moving and keep hoping. Before that though…

“Oi, manjuu,” Kurogane says gently, running two knuckles from the top of her head down one long ear. “Go spend some time with the kid, he’s hardly spoken since the princess got back the other day.”

He can feel Mokona considering him, but she nods, nuzzles his cheek, and bounds off to find Syaoran. They all need a bit of space, and right now Kurogane needs his.

It is easy to find a quiet, shadowed corner away from everyone. Only certain floors and corridors are used to house people. It leaves a large area of what they call the Government Building empty, which suits Kurogane just fine. He climbs a few stories of stairs to make sure no one happens across him. He doesn’t want company and he doesn’t want anyone seeing him.

With the feather safely resting at the bottom of the reservoir in the basement the acid rain sloughs off the building like any other rainwater, blurring the view and fogging the windows. Kurogane rests his back against the cool glass of the window, takes some pleasure in the gentle numbing it brings his burns. It’s the only relief he can find, the only relief he can afford.

Seconds bleed into minutes and his throat tightens. His chest constricts and tears burn in his eyes. He cannot breathe and it’s a fight to keep from crying out in anguish. He wants to scream, everything in him want to rage until the world around him lays in ruins. His hands itch to punch and tear, to grab Souhi and slash away at it all until he stops feeling, until it stops hurting. He knows it won’t work, even if he were to give in to these urges. He’s lost before, and he’s lost again, and there’s nothing that can stop the pain.

The tears fall slowly and sparingly, but it’s more than he’s afforded himself since boyhood. 

His son is gone. For all that Syaoran was not his blood he _was_ Kurogane’s son. He thinks he should have said so sooner, should have made it clear. A small voice in the back of his mind says it might have made a difference, but Kurogane knows better than that.

He clenches his fist. He purposefully does not smash it through the glass at his back. 

Syaoran is gone and there is a different Syaoran, the one his son was created from, with them now. Kurogane knows this Syaoran will become dear to him as well, because he is Syaoran still. Kurogane will protect him, Kurogane will love him. They’ll travel together and they will hope and they will find the Syaoran that was taken from them.

“Mother, it _hurts_ ,” he says to the shadows. Kurogane does not have a habit of speaking to the dead. He cannot see them like his princesses and they cannot speak to him in return, but right now it’s what he’s got. “It hurts just as badly.”

He doesn’t know how they’re going to save Syaoran, he doesn’t even know if they can. The others were saying he no longer has a soul, but they can’t be right. He still moved, he was still awake. Kurogane remembers when he’d first met Sakura, how she’d been lifeless without her soul. He’s sure they’re wrong.

They have to be wrong.

“They’re falling apart,” he says. He slides down the window and sits, leans his head on his knee. “I don’t know how to help them. The new kid looks so sad, and the princess, _gods_ , Mother I’ve never seen her look so broken.” The breath he takes shudders and more tears fall. He can barely speak through the tightness in his throat. “And the mage… I never- I didn’t think… but I couldn’t just let him die.”

There are cracks in the ceiling that he traces with his eyes when he raises his head. He doesn’t know what he expected from Fai after he’d used Kamui’s blood to save his life. Certainly not thanks, but this coldness is so unexpected. Fai is angry and Kurogane knows all he can do is take it.

In the face of all of this he feels so much like the lost child he was so many years ago. He doesn’t know how he’s going to protect these people he’s come to love. All of this is so much more than he thought it was. He’s suddenly realized he’s caught up in something so much bigger than he ever thought possible. He doesn’t understand any of it.

“What good is this strength, what good _am I_ , if I can’t even protect them?” Even as a whisper his voice is wrecked, hoarse and trembling. He’s failed them once, he cannot fail them again. He will bleed and fight for them all until there’s nothing left in him to do so, but he doesn’t know if it will be enough in the end. “Mother, I don’t know how to keep them safe.”

He wishes he could see her, just once more. He needs her still as a man like he had as a boy. He speaks to the empty shadows and he knows she won’t answer. He wonders if she can hear him from the heavens in Nihon, if the afterlife is a place connected throughout the worlds like dreams are. He tells himself this is how it works, if only for the meager comfort it brings him. He misses her. He misses his father too.

He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the glass behind him and remembers them. He doesn’t think they’d really know what to do here either, but he thinks if he could see them he might feel more prepared anyway.

Kurogane has failed this family like he had failed his parents. It will not defeat him. He takes an hour, maybe a bit more, and tries to remember how to breathe. He tries to remember the way his father’s hand felt atop his head and how it felt when his mother smiled before pressing a kiss to his hair. They would have both kept fighting to the bitter end and that is what Kurogane does.

There is life in him yet, strength he’s earned throughout his life, and love. Love for those people whose hearts are crying downstairs and who he will protect. Love for the boy who has been taken from them and love for the one who has joined them. He has love for the princess who is made of kindness and steel and the manjuu who for all her silliness cares so very deeply. He loves the magician, so much it’s frightening sometimes.

They are his family and he will do what he can with this strength he has. It cannot rain forever, and likewise the sun will shine on them all once more with time. They need only weather the storm.


End file.
